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Nanobiotech: Overwhelming Prospects and Inevitable Shocks

Vladimir M. Kishinets,
Ph.D., Leading Research Scientist
of the State Center of Social Research

Nanobiotech: Overwhelming Prospects and Inevitable Shocks

As is well known, considerable resources have been recently
raised for the development of nanotechnologies both in the USA and
Russia, and the situation is similar to the nuclear projects of the
middle of the last century (for information: up to date, 200 billion
rubles have been allocated to the state program of the NT development in
Russia).

Still, as will readily be observed, there exists an essential
difference: the nuclear programs were clearly oriented at the production
of nuclear weapons, and related technologies and new industries were
but the means of the realization of this aim. In the field of
nanotechnologies, the situation is paradoxically different: a
philosophical-and-technological paradigm of the manipulation of
individual atoms and molecules for production aims was brought forth
without any connection to any specific practical task. Research reveals
that even today, not only men in the street but experts, too, do not
have any clear idea of the possible outcome of the NT development.

Aimless Racing?

Protagonists – including those among Russian authorities, declare that
due to nanotechnologies we will soon "wake up in a different world”,
alarmists use to foretoken man-caused technical catastrophes, the
apocalypse in "gray goo”. Finally, even experts do not have any clear
understanding of final objectives of scientific-and-technological
development in the NT field. It should be mentioned that even at the
level of global decision-making there is some intuitive understanding of
the importance of the NT development, but final objectives of this
"project” have not been clearly set forth yet (or, at least, have not so
far been stated). Such a situation brings forth the necessity of the
analysis and forecasting of the humanitarian aspects of the forthcoming
stage of the scientific-and technological development of human
civilization.

However, today it is not wise to foretell the time
of the development of some specific technical devices and of the
subsequent social and economic events. The people at large are fond of
such impressive forecasts, but it is known that they never come true,
but are quite useful, as they call attention to the NT problem.
Nevertheless, efforts to reveal most general, global trends, taking into
account mostly logic and psychology instead of our current vision of
future technologies, appear to be more effective. Technological
forecasts, due to their hypothetic aspect, seem to be a sort of guiding
lines for the investigation of the prospects of the realization of some
human demands, but still their excessive use may lead to wrong
conclusions. Similarly, Edison, in his day, stated that aircraft would
become "an absolute weapon”, against which there would be no defense,
thus making wars impossible. The great engineer proved to be right in
his understanding of human psychology: a distant relative of aircraft –
nuclear-missile weapons – has considerably lowered the possibility of
world wars due to the absence of adequate defense against it.

From my point of view, the possible influence of
nanotechnologies on Humanity can be assessed in two basic aspects. The
first one is the influence on human civilization via the development of
machinery.

Machinery

Not without reason, it is assumed that new technologies will provide
more perfect machinery. As we live among machines and to a certain
extent due to machines, it is stated that the extraordinary development
of machinery will miraculously change our live: "NT will alter our world
in a more drastic way than steam and electricity put together…”, "NT
will radically change all the areas of human life…” – there is no
shortage of such statements. Still, it seems that they are, at least,
somewhat exaggerated.

In fact, today, human needs are met by unlimited technical
devices, and any technologies are finally realized in two basic fields –
weapons and human vital requirements satisfaction. First, machines
freed humans of unremitting toil, and then began providing ever more
comfortable living conditions. It may seem that this process is
never-ending. But it is certainly untrue. Lately, in developed countries
the level of the mechanization of all spheres of life is so high that
it next to impossible to add something significant to it,
notwithstanding any technological development. Moreover, people already
have to lower the level of comfort, exhausting themselves by physical
exercise and diets. Advanced machinery will doubtless introduce new
aspects into our life, as computers did in the field of communications
(considering their exponential growth for several decades).
Nevertheless, it is a gross exaggeration to say that computers "have
totally changed” our life, as some enthusiasts have earlier predicted.
Evidently, with the use of nanotechnologies we will be able to produce
more powerful cars and much smaller mobile telephones, but, generally
speaking, it will not drastically change our life, making it radically
better or happier. More machines will not create "new blessed world” for
us. We have already reached the limit of machinery influence.

A similar situation exists in the field of weapons. It goes
without saying that military technologies will continue to intensively
develop, but now it would be unreasonable to anticipate the emergence of
some advanced "nano- weapons” which in its integral military and
political might could be compared with, or even surpass modern
nuclear-missile weapons. Therefore, there is no ground to speak about a
possible revolution in the field of armaments.

As regards our common fears related to the development of
nanotechnologies, though that in general we welcome nano-alarmism as an
ideology quenching our ungrounded enthusiasm, we still cannot state that
NT are especially dangerous or "principally hostile” to humans. There
exists a well-known phenomenon of fear of all the unknown. It is even
useful for people that are the "weakest link” in the human-technical
chain: when this feeling is substituted by an illusion of safety, the
time of Chernobyl comes. Still, nanotechnologies do not introduce
anything new in this respect.

Moreover, there are some fears that the introduction of new NT
technologies will result in closing of traditional industries thus
causing unheard social and economic disasters. Undoubtedly, "old”
industries will be gradually ousted and it may cause certain social
tension. But such processes are inherent to our society and since the
Luddites time, humanity has been gaining experience in solving similar
problems.

So, does all the above-said in fact prove that NT are
extremely useful but transitory technologies that would result only in
cheap floor-to-ceiling TV sets and color-changing clothes? It is
definitely not true. It is our strong conviction that NT are even much
more significant than any other most advanced and effective
technologies. They would possibly lead us to really impressive global
shifts. But these profound changes would undoubtedly be related not to
the world of machinery, but to the living world, namely, to human
biology.

The Battlefield Is Life. The NT Major Objective

Life in fact is a constant realization of nano-physical processes,
atom-by-atom, molecule-by-molecule formation of structures and proteins
in accordance with programs recorded in DNA and RNA. Any living being,
including humans, is nothing but a symbiotic conglomerate of billions of
nano plants – living cells.

It goes without saying that one can effectively interfere into a
cell biology only at a nano- level. Today it is well-known that such
interference would most likely be possible through the use of
hypothetical nano-biorobots that are now actively developed in the whole
world. The demand for such interference is extremely urgent: the vast
majority of human diseases are cell pathologies, and today’s chemical
drugs are just forced palliatives.

But this issue is now becoming even more comprehensive. A few
years ago, R. Freitas published a well-known work [1] where he
substantiated the possibility of substituting human blood components
with an immense amount of nano- devices. His calculations demonstrate
that such "blood” may be considerably more perfect than common human
blood in its various characteristics. Therefore, an idea was put forward
that nanorobots can be used not only for medical treatment but also for
the improvement of a human body.

So, there is only one step therefrom to the idea of the use of
such nano improvement of human body for arbitrary long prolongation of
human life, that is to the idea of practical immortality. (Regardless
the fact that the possibility of "practical immortality” is generally
not denied now, in our daily life we still deem it as a sort of utopia).
However, when one looks more closely, this prospect is much less
fantastic than the phenomenon of life itself. It is rather difficult to
understand why such supercomplex, self-organising and self-replicating
structures as living organisms do not exist for 20 thousand or 20
million years but inevitably perish in a rather short period of time).
Human biology specifics make our life and health our most treasured
wealth. As we become more and more aware of the fact that NTs are the
sole and real key to a long and vigorous life, the development of
nano-bio-robots will not only become the major task in the field of
nanotechnologies, but the most urgent priority in human life in general.
Nowadays, there is no doubt that this most humane problem will be
sooner or later solved. Still, it should be remembered that on this way
we will certainly face possibly the most serious ordeals in the history
of Mankind.

First and foremost, it might be wrong to deem such a practically
immortal human being («Nano Sapiens», as we conventionally call him) as
a common but long-living man. It is not only his biology that would
change, making his body radically different. All these changes,
alongside with the laws of expediency, will inevitably lead, as is shown
in [2], to a total transformation of all forms of live activities, to a
complete decline of all that makes us human. To begin with, needs of
biological reproduction will disappear, as well as a whole range of
related instincts whose only meaning is to provide physical existence of
short-lived mortal beings. Just imagine our life free of sexual
relations, one’s need for power, money-making, and all aspects related
to the birth and upbringing of children, to diseases and death, and you
will understand how radically the existence of these practically
immortal beings would be different from ours. In other words, having
become "practically immortal”, humans would be drastically transformed
and, in fact, would cease to be Homo Sapiens. A phenomenon that we call
"Perekhod” (Transition) would occur: individual human minds would enter
brand new, alternative "immortal bodies”, transformed with the use of
advanced technologies. As a consequence, the dying out of instincts now
providing the existence of our biological species and, moreover,
predetermining all the socioeconomic and political structure of our
civilization, would totally, beyond recognition, transform the Earth
civilization.

The Most Urgent Problems

In this new civilization there would exist nor "human’ social
institutions brought to life by our instincts, neither such concepts as
power, wealth, money, family, violence, war, etc. The Perekhod would
entail most radical shifts. But any system undergoing fundamental
changes, inevitably loses its stability. The transition period dangers
would be caused by the fact that people, having lost their old values to
a great degree, would not yet discover their alternative possibilities.
To prevent chaos in the world in that period, adequate efforts, totally
new political concepts and advanced, so far unknown means of preserving
stability, would be required.

It would undoubtedly take us too much time to consider these
problems in detail, but to conceive their specifics and scope, let us
turn to a similar episode from contemporary history. The transition from
one civilization to another would, in some aspects, be similar to the
end of the world socialist system when over vast territories, in many
countries a social, economic and political patterns, as well as an
attitude to property, labor and public authorities started to change and
radical shifts in culture, everyday life and in many other fields were
manifested. Just imagine all these processes intensified many times and
occurring not in a dozen of states, but simultaneously in the whole
world. It goes without saying that such a period would be marked by
extreme instability.

Time before changing of earthly civilizations will become time
of disintegration of the world socio-economic system. A modern economy
will be replaced by the certain forms of natural exchange, and time of
the centralized forms of management will come in a policy The spiral of
development of biological type of Nano Sapiens on its last coil can
return us to times of elementary hunger and problems of physical
survival of enormous the masses of people.

As we marked already, the today's official Russian estimations
of development of nanotechnologies are in quite other tones. And this
not with a purpose to hide something or embellish. Reason is in absence
adequate awareness a few farther prospects.

It is quite evident that Humanity has never faced such an impressive
challenge.
In fact, the period of Perekhod might turn out to be the most dangerous
and dramatic moment of the whole life of our biological species.

The most essential characteristic of the Perekhod is its
inevitability. It just cannot be avoided. It is an objective process
that Humanity will have to face sooner or later. We can only speed up to
some degree or postpone these events and prepare to them. Nowadays, we
are not in the dark about the situation and aware that the engineers of
nano robots components are, in fact, working on the problem of human
immortality, and the realization of immortality leads to a change of the
Earth civilization. And the scope of the forthcoming events,
notwithstanding their hypothetical character, now makes us to look into
the future with courage and hope and to prepare for the solution of
problems we are to face.

At the same time, it should be noted that in Russia, for
example, one does not pay due attention to the problems of the
humanitarian consequences of the NT development. The solution of
technical problems in Russia is traditionally still more important than
concern for their final consequences to people. The new is always
positive – this approach makes us forget "inconsiderable” humanitarian
consequences. But sooner or later, one would have to pay attention to
them, including countries that are not occupying key positions in NT
race, as its consequences would affect everybody irrespective of the
degree of their involvement in research and development works. It is
these states which constitute the world majority, that should be most
interested in accessibility of research results and in the development
of the international system of monitoring humanitarian applications of
nanotechnologies. In this context, today’s event in which we are
participating, is an outstanding example of such an initiative. Let us
hope that it will evoke a wide response and be further developed in the
world.